Steven Hawking warns of unforgiving future by Jessica Hesp

In the year 2016, Steven Hawking told the BBC: "Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes almost near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years.

There's a whole field of science, known as the SETI (The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) dedicated to listening for signals from intelligent beings elsewhere in the Universe. But Hawking cautioned against trying to actively hail any alien civilisations that might be out there.

In 2010, he told the Discovery Channel that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources and then move on.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said.10,000 years.